


fall away to the sound (of my heart to your beat)

by PanBoleyn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Queliot Week 2019, discussion of dubcon situations, minor Margo/Alice and various permutations of Julia/Kady/Penny, this fic includes a 4.13 fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 13:03:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19335064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: In a world where you bond to your soulmate at the first skin-to-skin touch, things go a little differently from the moment Quentin and Eliot meet, and things end - so far - happier too.





	fall away to the sound (of my heart to your beat)

**Author's Note:**

> As ever, thanks to the RAO crowd for cheering me on!

 

“Am I hallucinating?”

 

It’s a useless question to ask, and Quentin knows this, but he can’t think of anything better to say. Hazel eyes look him up and down again - he might be stunned, but that first onceover was anything but subtle, and yes, Quentin feels very judged.

 

“If you were, how would asking me help?”

 

That’s when Eliot Waugh catches Quentin by the wrist to tow him along to this exam he’s apparently late for. At first, long fingers close around Quentin’s sleeve, no direct contact. But as Eliot pulls him along and Quentin struggles to keep up, his sleeve rides up and - he has a moment to register smooth skin against his own before -

 

The world spins and crashes and for a moment he’s not one person but two, holy shit -

 

“Oh,” Quentin breathes, but he looks up into a blank, shuttered face, and oh of course. If Quentin got a glimpse of Eliot’s mind (bright and dark in equal measure, and Quentin wants to be blinded by the bright of it and wander in the dark, how does he already want this?) then Eliot got a glimpse of his, and why would anyone want to be linked with Quentin like that?

 

Something cracks in Eliot’s distant expression, some flash in his eyes. He yanks Quentin close by the grip he still has on his wrist. “Later. Once your exam’s over. They won’t let you fail now, they can’t, they’ll know, and we will talk about this once you _understand_ , Quentin Coldwater.”

Quentin is sidetracked from the realization of _holy fuck I just met my soulmate and he’s one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen_ by the fact that Julia is also here at the exam, which turns out to be for magic. Which, holy shit. And things are blurred after that between the cards flying through the air and his really unfriendly roommate and he doesn’t know where Julia is, he doesn’t know how to find Eliot -

 

Some of it comes crashing down when he realizes Julia didn’t get in. Some more crashes down when Eliot finds him, and says, “So, look. I have a platonic soulmate, Margo. You and I will probably last a lot longer the same way, got it?”

 

What’s Quentin supposed to say to that, with the link between them so new but already something he’s terrified to lose? “Yeah, all right,” he says, and he manages to sound almost calm about it. He’s proud of that, and actually, it’s not - it’s nice. Margo seems to be reserving judgment on him - _“he’s not that cute”_ and why was Eliot calling him cute if they’re platonic? - but she doesn’t disdain him on sight the way gorgeous popular people like her and Eliot would do in the normal course of things.

  
And then - there’s Alice. Intense, brilliant Alice, whose hand brushes his in passing and -

 

Two as one again, for another dizzying moment, if he and Eliot are platonic then maybe… But all Alice cares about is her brother, and Quentin can’t exactly blame her for that. So he agrees to help, because how could he not? But they summon that, that thing, and the Dean’s eyes are gouged out. And Quentin is almost expelled and -

  
“You are not alone here,” Eliot says, and it’s Eliot and Margo who flag him down when he’s not expelled after all, they have a barbecue in the drizzling rain and it’s ridiculous, it is. But it’s the most at home Quentin’s felt since, since he and Julia were little on the tire swing his dad set up for them, or lying under their map table.

  
Since friendship took a left turn into something much more painful and depression struck to make everything worse.

 

There’s the taste of grilled meat and cocktails on his tongue, Quentin is leaning into Eliot’s right side with Margo on his left, and Margo reaches around to ruffle Quentin’s hair so they’re like, like a circuit. And it feels like home, like a safe space in the world. They feel like a safe space in the world, when Eliot is a steady presence behind him during the fight with Julia, when he’s sent to the Cottage without a discipline because they have extra room.

  
“And it might help you to develop yourself, to be in close proximity to both of your soulmates. That’s been known to happen,” Sunderland says, and OK, yeah, there’s a listing that people have to fill out because sometimes bonds and magic mix badly, but he hadn’t expected someone to mention it so directly when none of them have.

  
There’s Alice, again, summoning her brother, and Quentin shouldn’t have brought the box but Charlie was going to _kill them both_. What was he supposed to do? Alice runs and their link aches, all the time. But he powers through it as best he can till she comes back, and in the meantime and after, there’s Eliot and Margo.

 

Margo sits on the steps with him when he feels crushed by the weight of his father’s illness, Eliot joins him in that ill-fated test on Cancer Puppy. And Alice is back, they skirt each other and wonder what the nature of their bond is.

  
Then comes Brakebills South.

 

<><><>

 

After they’re themselves again, Quentin and Alice both fumble for clothes, but neither of them says anything about splitting up. They sit side by side on the edge of the bed, leaning into each other, both of them trembling.

  
“I’m glad it was you,” Alice says, finally, and she holds his hand so tight it almost hurts. “But. I don’t think we’re…”

  
There hadn’t been the flare of deepened connection that comes with first going to bed with one’s romantic soulmate. There had just been… being foxes, and then being themselves but still thinking like foxes, and Quentin is so so glad it was Alice because they’re _safe_ with each other, that much their bond does ensure. But now… “We’re, um, our bond’s not romantic,” he says, and he thinks he might be holding Alice’s hand tight enough to hurt now too. “That means Eliot lied to me,” he adds, because it’s easier, sort of, to think of that than to think about the fact that one of their teachers _violated them_ by proxy, spelling them to fuck.

  
“I can teach you a good hex to get back at him,” Alice says, her voice shaking. “We - Q - are we going to report him when we go back?”

  
“You know more about Fogg than me, do you think it will help?” Quentin asks.

  
Alice sniffs, and Quentin turns to look at her, watches her swipe at her eyes with her free hand before her jaw sets and she turns sharper, somehow. “No. I don’t think he will. He didn’t do anything, as far as Charlie or the others who vanished are concerned. Just brushed it off and tried to avoid talking about it. No one knows about that moth beast that attacked us either, did you know? It’s all secrets and lies, and Mayakovsky is brilliant. He’s horrible, but he’s really good at what he does. Fogg won’t want to get rid of him. They’ll say it was an accident, an unintended side effect caused by our own feelings.”

 

Quentin doesn’t know what to make of that, especially since for all he knows there’s truth in it. He has been attracted to Alice almost from the start, but. But he doesn’t think - it had all felt so different than how sex usually is for him, even when they were humans again. And there’s the bond that’s been twisting between them since it started, the link trying to tell them no and the magic overriding it. And - Quentin’s always been a little fascinated by soulmates, he’s read that platonic soulmates are lovers, like the most intense kind of friends with benefits. So maybe the bond was only warning them they didn’t want this, like this, not now.

 

But it still warned them, which means it’s still wrong.

  
They sit together until they hear other people stirring, until it’s safe to go shower. Quentin turns the water as hot as he can stand it, like that will wash off what’s happened. Then they’re geese again, then they’re back at the Cottage and.

  
After everything, to come back to find out that Eliot has a boyfriend is just too much. Quentin doesn’t even say hello, he just turns on his heel and goes inside, locking the door to his room with both the doorknob lock and a spell. Then he just… falls across the bed and buries his face in his pillow. There are two careful tugs in his mind, two soulmates projecting worry across the link. _Leave me alone!_ Quentin thinks, and he’s relieved when sleep takes him and he doesn’t have to think anymore.

  
Things happen - fast, after that. Penny getting stabbed, because he took a hit for Quentin. The attacker being Mike, who isn’t Mike, who is actually the Beast. Finding out Eliza is Jane, finding out that this is a time loop, that they’re all pretty much fucked. Finding out that the Beast is coming for them, specifically.

  
Quentin cares about all of this, of course he does. But part of him can’t care about anything but Eliot, spiraling in the wake of killing Mike. Eliot killed Mike, a guy he was halfway to falling in love with, and Quentin doesn’t know how to help him. Doesn’t know what to do except try to be there, to let Eliot alternately sprawl on him and spit fury, like a half-tame cat that doesn’t know if it wants to be petted or to claw at anyone who approaches.

  
The emotion bottles make it worse for all of them - Quentin thinks they make it worse not only because the feelings come back stronger but because _not feeling_ is such a relief that feeling again is even more painful. Eliot and Quentin get drunk by the fire, they talk about Chatwin’s Torrent and Eliot refuses to say outright why he thinks he needs healing.

 _I’m a broken mess myself, but I want to help, please let me try,_ Quentin thinks, but he doesn’t know how to say it. He doesn’t know what to do, and Margo doesn’t know what to do. Thet maneuver Eliot onto his bed, his long limbs flopping all over the place and the two of them are too damn short for this.

  
It starts as a hug, Quentin and Margo curled together and seeking whatever comfort they can. Later, he’ll never remember which one of them kisses the other first, he’s not sure when they lost their shirts and he’s not quite sure when Eliot woke up. All he knows is that he goes to pull Eliot into a kiss and Eliot knocks his hand away, his own broad palm and long fingers curling round the back of Quentin’s neck. Quentin’s mind is spinning with magic and alcohol already and now -

  
The bond flares to life in his mind as Eliot kisses him. He feels safe, he feels claimed - he feels like for this one moment nothing is wrong and everything is right. And that feeling stays with him through the lovely blur of the night, lingering even when he blinks awake in morning sunlight.

  
Margo is already up, not bothering to put her own clothes back on but stealing one of Eliot’s robes. She catches sight of Quentin and winks at him. “That was fun - you’re better with your mouth than I expected, little Q,” she teases, and he blushes but there’s a part of him that’s oddly proud of the comment, too. He went down on her, he remembers, but he also remembers Eliot’s cock in his mouth, and, well.

  
Before he can respond, she reaches over and ruffles his hair. “Once he wakes up, I think you’ll have a better argument for his ridiculous plan to make you and him like me and him, or you and Kitty-Cat Quinn.” She kisses his forehead, of all things, and then she’s gone, sauntering out the door in Eliot’s robe without a care in the world.

  
Quentin thinks, idly, that he’d love to be half as confident as she is.

  
Eliot’s hand rests on his hip, and so Quentin knows when Eliot wakes up, when those fingers press into his skin. “Hmm… you’re still here?” Eliot murmurs, squinting against the light. His hair’s a mess and Quentin’s fingers itch to try and order it, but he doesn’t. Not yet.

  
“Did you want me to go?” he asks, meeting Eliot’s eyes.

  
“I - no. Not really. But, Q…”

  
“No. Look, if you don’t want this, if you don’t want me, OK, fine, just say so. But don’t - lie to me, Eliot. I know how it feels to go to bed with a soulmate that’s meant to be platonic, after what Mayakovsky set me and Alice up for. But with you and me, the bond freaking lit up last night. We’re - we work, we could work, if you want us to. If we try. El, come on. Tell me no or tell me yes, but don’t lie to me anymore. Don’t deny this is real, even if you decide you don’t want -”

  
Quentin isn’t really expecting Eliot’s response to be pulling him into another kiss, but he’s certainly not going to object.

 

<><><>

 

In this world, Quentin is not an absentee king, in part because he didn’t lose his love at all. In part because he didn’t lose anyone. But he also, still, promised Julia that he would help. “She’s my oldest friend, Eliot. I have to,” Quentin tells him the morning he leaves Fillory. “You would do the same if it were Margo, you know you would.”

  
“Margo is as much my soulmate as you are, it may be platonic but that doesn’t change shit, you know that with Alice. Julia is the hedge bitch who trapped you in your own head, Quentin, who almost cost us everything with the Beast. If Kady hadn’t been working with Julia and knew what she planned…” Quentin feels for Kady - caught between her two soulmates, stopping the one from a plan that would almost certainly leave the other dead likely seemed like the best option. But it can’t have been easy.

  
Quentin hopes he never, ever has to make a choice like that.

  
“I know, Eliot. But what Reynard did to her… I can’t blame her for wanting to work with anyone who would help. And we stopped her, we killed the Beast with the Leo Blade, it all worked out.”

  
“This time. I don’t trust her, and I especially don’t trust her with you, Quentin. Also, have you considered what it will do to our bond to be so far apart? When you fell through the fountain it hurt us both. It’ll fuck you up twice over, actually, and Alice too,” Eliot points out, and Quentin can’t entirely argue that, but.

  
“We’ll wear those amulets, like the ones you and Margo wore when she went to Earth to make that golem for you. That will help, and I won’t be gone long,” Quentin promises, leaning down to kiss Eliot again before making himself get out of the bed.

  
There are, in the end, several problems with this theory. The first is that Quentin has to watch Eliot die. Or, well, watch his golem die, bleeding out on the bank floor, and it’s only hands on him pulling him away that get him to move. Quentin actually never knows who it was that pulled him out of there, he only remembers staring at Eliot’s lifeless eyes as someone grabs him. He knows it’s not really Eliot, the bond shuddered in the back of his mind but still pulses with life. But that hadn’t seemed to matter when he’d still had to _watch_.

 

He only remembers coming back to Fillory to find Eliot unconscious, Margo fighting the same dizziness through her bond to El that Quentin is from his. “Julia needs you more now,” Margo says, and there’s something hard in her eyes that Quentin wants to flinch from. He and Margo aren’t soulmates, they have only quiet echoes of each other through their bonds to Eliot, but he likes Margo. He loves her in a family sort of way and he’s pretty sure she loves him the same, but it’s clear she blames him for Eliot right now, at least in part.

  
And she’s not wrong, is she? But Margo does promise to enchant a mirror so they can talk, and for now that’ll have to be enough.

  
So Quentin goes back to Earth, to keep an eye on Julia. But then, when he’s curled up reading at the Cottage - “It is customary to bow in the presence of your High King.” Quentin practically throws himself on Eliot, and he knows he’s crying, he realizes dizzily that they’re both crying at this point. Eliot pulls him back just far enough to frame Quentin’s face in his hands and kiss him, hard, ignoring the whistles from other students scattered around.

  
“They kicked me out,” Eliot mutters against Quentin’s lips. “They kicked me out, because I’m a fuck up, but I don’t - I’ll care in a few minutes but I fucking missed you, we’re going to one of our rooms right the fuck now, OK?” And obviously Quentin isn’t going to argue with that, is he?

  
They confront gods, they kill gods, and Quentin finds out too late - he’s on the wrong side of the Fillory clock and he can’t get back, Eliot is on the other side and - no. No no no he can’t do this, he can’t.

  
He’s not sure how long he’s on his knees there, forehead pressed to the wood and tears in his eyes. The amulet means he doesn’t feel the separation in his bond but he doesn’t need to feel it to know it. Not when this one might be forever.

 

<><><>

 

So, Fray was always supposed to be Eliot and Fen’s daughter. Even though the end agreement had been a triad marriage, because Fillorian law declares that bondmates cannot be separated and the High King still needed to marry Fen, a spell after Fen got pregnant had told them Fen’s child was Eliot’s by blood. But the thing is, the thing is.

  
In past Fillory, Teddy had been Quentin and Arielle’s by blood. It hadn’t made Eliot any less his father. Quentin had been as bemused as Eliot by the idea of figuring out how to be a father to an adult they didn’t see grow up, but they’d wanted to try. He supposes they must have done something right, or Fen did (actually, Quentin is sure Fen did, less sure he and Eliot did) because Fray likes them enough to break the pretense even if it puts her in danger, robbing the Fairy Queen of her leverage.

  
None of this helps when Fen is so shattered Quentin can’t do anything for her at all, when Eliot is silent and tense in their bed, staring up into the dark.

  
And so Quentin throws himself all the more into the quest to restore magic, as though that will save them all, somehow. Which is how, in this version of the story, he ends up in Timeline 23 with Julia and Josh, ends up staring down his own dark shadow - again, first a depression monster and now this - and he doesn’t know what to make of this.

  
“I drove Eliot mad when I came back like this, and Alice too,” the Beast Quentin says with a sharp-edged smile, because of course that’s a constant, except it’s switched, Eliot was Quentin’s platonic soulmate and Alice was his romantic one, in Timeline 23. Oh, and apparently this Penny was bonded to Julia, rather than to Kady.

  
And with one mistaken identity kiss, he’s bound to Quentin’s Julia. Quentin’s Julia, who is bound to Kady who is also tied to the Penny Alice is desperately trying to get out of the Underworld. Quentin is worried about them, worried about how the hell they’re gonna fix all this, but he’s pretty sure he’s out of his depth there.

  
“There’s a worse monster than me out there,” says Beast Quentin, who dies crying with some of Julia’s shade to remind him who he was. Quentin watches his other self die and wonders what to think of him. He’d like to have some of his evil self’s confidence, but that’s the only thing of him he’d ever want.

  
But… a monster worse than the Beast. That does not sound good, not at all. And when Quentin incepts Ora, for a moment he almost says he’ll stay in the castle, because it’s his fault magic is shut off after all. But he thinks of telling Eliot that, thinks that Alice and Margo won’t like it either, and so he swallows back the impulse. “Someone will stay,” he says, and tries not to think of how they’re going to pull that off.

  
“Fuck that. We have a god-killing bullet, we’ll shoot the thing,” Eliot says. “Or rather, I’ll shoot the thing, because I can aim a gun and I’m not sure who else can. I might have hated learning to shoot, but I’m very good at it.”

  
Quentin would worry more about the fact that Ora vanishes the moment Eliot shoots the Monster, but then Fogg betrays them and they’re all being forced to drink memory potion. He and Eliot, Alice and Margo, drink together, Quentin’s hands in Alice’s and Eliot’s, Eliot’s free hand in Margo’s.

  
“We can’t forget this, we can’t,” Margo says, and at the last possible moment she grabs Alice’s hand - and Quentin has a horrified moment to feel the connection bounce between all their interlinks and realize they’ve never touched skin to skin before, probably because Margo wears gloves to stop a bond whenever she can -

  
Everything slips away into the darkness and when Brian opens his eyes, he has no soulmates at all.

 

<><><>

 

“I dreamed of her again,” Brian tells Nigel, quiet in the dimness of their bedroom. The curtains keep out most of the early sunlight, so he can barely see his soulmate’s face. But he knows the look that will be on Nigel’s face, the frustration and the worry, the confusion.

  
“I dreamed of mine too,” Nigel admits, his accent more Welsh than Received Pronunciation this morning - always, when he’s tired or upset, he sounds more like his mother than how the schools his father paid for taught him to speak. Nigel’s woman is dark-haired and dark-eyed, Brian’s is a blue-eyed blonde. They dream of them like they used to dream of each other - Brian recognized Nigel’s gold-hazel eyes when they ran into each other on the street even before their hands accidentally brushed and their bond flared to life. Nigel said he remembers the feel of Brian’s hair against his fingers.

  
They dream of other things too, a little boy’s laughter, colored tiles in their hands. A cliff by the ocean - and their girls are both there, and all of them have crowns, of all things - and the taste of fruit. Nigel says peaches, Brian says plums, and neither of them quite know why, or why they also think of a woman saying _“Well, I promised my father I’d have at least one, but I’d rather be the favorite aunt, why don’t we help each other out, my favorite boys?”_

  
“I just wish I understood this!” Brian says, fisting a hand in his own hair, frustrated.

  
“Stop that, love,” Nigel murmurs, drawing Brian’s hand free, and Brian has a flash of both his hands clutching at longer hair, Nigel in front of him carefully pulling his hands out, looking at him with worry in his eyes. “We’ll figure it out eventually, and for now, I get melodies out of it and you get paintings. I keep saying, darling, you should throw over that teaching job and just paint for a living.”

  
“Yeah, that’s practical,” Brian quips, and he wants to be as brave as Nigel, to say to hell with practicality and pursue the things he wants and only those, but. He’s a working-class Boston boy and Nigel is the son of a lord, even a bastard son has security Brian never knew, growing up. Being a professor is impractical enough until he gets tenure; being an artist would be worse.

  
Between classes that day, Brian stops for coffee, and Nigel comes up the sidewalk toward him. “Didn’t you have an audition today?” Brian asks, frowning. Something’s… not right, something’s wrong with his bond, it’s like it’s a piano key that’s been hit wrong.

  
“Quentin, I found you!”

  
It doesn’t make sense, none of this makes sense, all that Brian knows for weeks on end following that moment where Nigel’s eyes blazed red is that the world is so much more horrifying than he ever expected. And that something took Nigel away from him, and Brian doesn’t know how to get him back.

  
Then, then he’s Quentin again, standing there while Eliot’s body kills someone, and he can feel Alice in his head again, the echo of Margo. A _double echo_ of Margo, from Alice and from Eliot, now. But Eliot himself… The bond is still there but it’s wrong, it’s twisted and dizzying.

  
“Could I maybe have Eliot back?” Quentin asks because he can’t help himself, because he has to hope.

  
“You should know that your friend Eliot is dead,” the Monster says when Quentin is already grieving his father, and Quentin. He thinks of Eliot’s golem sprawled on the ground, thinks of burying Eliot at the Mosaic, but he thinks also that the bond is still there. Twisted and wrong but there, and it couldn’t be if Eliot was dead because, because -

  
Because it can’t just be about the body. If it was just about the body then Nigel and Brian wouldn’t have needed to re-bond, it would have just been there. Janet and Casey - Margo and Alice - would have been bonded, and from what Quentin’s been told they absolutely had not felt a thing until their memories came back.

  
“He has to still be in there,” Quentin tells Alice, who chose to stay with him instead of going back to Fillory with Margo because neither of them quite know what to make of each other, and anyway, Alice had declared that Quentin needed her more than Margo did, right at this moment. She and Margo might be bonded but they’ve never been close, while Quentin is left dealing with the thing possessing the love of his life.

  
(Also, none of them have trusted Quentin alone with Julia since the incident with Reynard, which Quentin thinks is unfair but since Julia doesn’t seem to be aware of it, he hasn’t mentioned it.)

  
“What if he’s not?” Alice asks, gently. “The Monster is… childish, but not stupid. If Eliot’s still in there, that’s leverage for it to use.”

  
Quentin ignores her as best he can, until the day that, just for one breathless moment, the bond is right in his head. In the living room, Eliot sways on his feet and it’s his eyes meeting Quentin’s. “Q. Q, it’s me. I’m alive in here.”

  
“I’ll get you back, El, I will,” Quentin says in a breathless rush, and then the body in his arms shudders. He steps back but not fast enough, and the Monster catches him by the collar. But it’s all right, it will be all right, because Eliot’s still in there.

 

<><><>

 

“Quentin, what is this feeling that draws me to you? It’s how I found you once I took this body, but what _is_ it?”

  
Quentin blinks awake and squints into the dimness of his room. Alice had gone to Modesto to investigate something for Kady, and on coming back had taken one look at Quentin and told him off. It had only gotten worse when she’d asked why he was wearing a turtleneck, knowing that he hates turtlenecks.

  
She had been… unhappy, when she saw the finger bruises on his throat.

_“I do not want to be the one to tell Eliot you got yourself killed trying to save him, and I also don’t want to feel you die! We don’t want to lose you, you idiot. Now, eat something, then get some sleep, and stop daring that thing to kill you.”_

  
It had been… half a bluff. Quentin doesn’t want to die, but if his death is the cost for Eliot’s life, then Quentin, himself, would consider that worth it. However, he knows damn well that Eliot would disagree, and Quentin wouldn’t consider it worth it if his place and Eliot’s were swapped. Also he doesn’t want to saddle Eliot or Alice with the screaming void Kady deals with or 23 used to have. The one for a bond shattered by death.

  
So. Not dying. He can try to manage that at least.

  
The Monster is staring at him, waiting, and Quentin swallows hard. His mouth tastes funny like it always does after a nap. “It’s… a thing that happens between bodies sometimes, it’s nothing for you to worry about.”

  
Wrong-familiar hands pet his shoulders, his arms, the Monster behind him now. Quentin breathes in and out, careful, trying not to react. “It makes me want to touch you. Like humans pet their dogs outside. I’ve seen them. Does it make you my pet, Quentin?”

  
What the fuck is he supposed to say to that? Quentin doesn’t exactly like being compared to a pet, but it is sort of how the Monster treats him. Also, it occurs to him that this is a much better kind of _touch_ than the likeliest alternatives. Better to encourage it then, maybe. “Pretty much, yeah,” he says, and he’s proud of how steady his voice is. He’s getting good at faking things.

  
“What about the other one? The one who wouldn’t help me be like Eliot? The body feels… drawn to her too, but it’s not the same. I don’t know how it’s not the same, but it’s not.”

  
Ohh fuck. “That’s just because she’s a woman,” Quentin says, which is the first lie that comes to mind. It’s not a very good one, but in his defense he just woke up. And the Monster seems to accept it, which is good because it means he stops asking questions. It’s bad, because he decides to cuddle up against Quentin on the bed the way he did on the bridge that day, and it’s not like Quentin can push him off, is it?

  
Alice finds them later - Quentin doesn’t exactly know how he managed to fall asleep again, but he assumes his body just shut off on its own - and the look of horror on her face perfectly mirrors his own feelings. The Monster, annoyed at company, huffs and blips out, Alice hurrying forward as soon as he’s gone. “What the fuck?”

  
“It thinks the bond makes me its pet. Like, more than it already did.”

  
“Oh, that’s not good.”

  
“No,” Quentin agrees grimly.

  
But nothing is worse than the corpse incident. Even 23 telling them that Eliot is poking around in there, actively fighting from the inside, only helps so much when Quentin has river dirt under his nails, when he can still remember the weight of the body, the way the Monster had curled around him, fucking _nuzzled_ him.

  
Ran its stolen hand down his chest in a way that - that’s not - oh God _please_ don’t let that thing discover sex, Quentin won’t be able to stop it and and - and the bond came alive because of course it did, because Quentin always wants Eliot’s touch, and those are still Eliot’s hands and oh God, oh God, it’s still sparking even though the Monster’s gone again and he -

  
“Quentin!” It might have been Julia who screamed his name, or maybe Alice, but Quentin’s legs give out, the darkness takes him before he can figure out who spoke to him.

 

<><><>

 

“How many days did I miss?” Quentin croaks out when he opens his eyes to find Margo sitting on the edge of his bed. Another time he might question Margo’s presence, but not just now.

  
“Three, they said,” Margo tells him, reaching over to brush hair out of his eyes. “23 said it’s backlash from the Monster possessing Eliot. He, he remembers something similar happening to Eliot and Alice in his timeline because of the other you going evil. Not sure why it took so long but it hit you bad when it hit.”

  
“Oh. Shit,” Quentin says, running a hand over his face. “From the look on your face, I missed something important.”

  
Margo nods. “The first thing you need to know, Q - we have a way to get that thing out of him. But, we no longer have a reason for it to come visit us, because it got the last stone. So we’re gonna have to get creative, which I think we can manage.” She pulls an amulet from her pocket, and Quentin realizes belatedly that she’s wearing one. “With all the links between us, you, me, and Alice need to have these things on,” she says in that tone which tells Quentin no will not be accepted as an answer. But…

  
“But, feeling the twisted bond, at least I know he’s still alive.”

  
“I get that, Q, but to get him back for real, we’ve gotta be functional, hear me?”

  
Quentin nods, because that makes sense, and he takes the amulet from Margo’s hands. But then he stops, frowning down at it. “No,” he says slowly. “Not - not yet.”

  
“Quentin -”

  
“You just said we don’t have any way to get the Monster to come to us. But it told me that once it possessed Eliot, it found me through the bond. It can feel it. I’m thinking, maybe… Look, it has this fixation on me.”

  
“Yeah, no shit, Alice told me,” Margo says. “Q, if you’re suggesting we make you bait -”

  
“Do you have a better idea?”

  
From what Quentin can gather out of the shouting that follows involving Margo, Alice, and Julia once Margo tows him out to the front room and announces his ‘crazy plan’, no, they do not exactly have a better idea, they just don’t like his. He really doesn’t think this is fair, all things considered. Also, he’s pretty sure the scheme that sends him and Alice back to Brakebills South is just Margo’s way of stopping him from doing anything stupid.

  
The timeshare spell is. A lot. If Quentin hadn’t already been creeped the fuck out by what Mayakovsky did to them, now, when he can feel the magic but he’s not in thrall to it, when he goes to Mayakovsky for help and the guy takes it as permission to basically climb on Quentin… Yeah, he’s creeped the fuck out.

  
And then 23 comes back for them, his face set and grim. “That thing took Julia.” Now he’s wearing an amulet too. And when they get back, Quentin stops arguing. With the Sister involved, they can’t guess anything about what the Monster will do anymore. So he closes his eyes and slips the chain over his neck. Things go quiet, far quieter than he’s ever liked, but it’s tolerable. He can breathe through the silence, he can survive this, even as they tell him to yell at a fucking plant, when they drink from a reservoir of magic.

  
When they get Julia back but not Eliot. And Quentin is in Julia’s hospital room when the fucking Binder tells 23 to choose for her, which, what the fuck. “Oh my God, you’re psychic, fucking incept her and find out!” and then he flees the room because he can’t breathe anymore, he can’t handle any more.

  
Alice, on the Cottage steps. “We make a good team. We’re bonded for a reason, right?”

  
Then the trippy woods, and Eliot’s blood everywhere, Margo screaming his name. And Quentin just falls to his knees beside them, gripping Eliot’s hand. He doesn’t dare take the amulet off now, if he feels Eliot die through the bond he will go insane, he knows it. “Come back to us, don’t leave me, El, please,” he whispers, and he thinks of Eliot posed on the Brakebills sign, Eliot staring up at him as Quentin put a crown on his head, even Nigel insisting on teaching Brian how to dance.

  
“Since you put it so sweetly, Bambi,” Eliot whispers, eyes half-open. “Q, there you are,” he adds, before 23 travels them away and then they take Eliot away.

  
Quentin and Margo, with Eliot’s blood on their hands, staring at each other. Then Margo’s gaze flicks to Alice, standing with 23. “We’ve gotta go!” 23 says, and Margo looks back at Quentin. _They’re ours,_ her expression says. _I’ll watch him if you watch her, we’re all gonna get through this._

  
Quentin can do that.

 

<><><>

 

“Take her and go,” Quentin tells 23, and they had to take off their amulets so their magic wouldn’t backfire, but even if he couldn’t feel Alice’s fury and panic through their link he’d be able to guess at it. But she took care of him, when she came back from Modesto. She and Margo and Jules kept him from what would probably have been suicide, acting as bait for the Monster. And he can do what needs doing, if the only one he has to worry about is himself.

  
Everett watches him, all smug and assured, and Quentin thinks it shouldn’t be him facing this guy down, it should be Kady, who lost her soulmate to the Library, who’s been fighting them for weeks and weeks now. But Kady isn’t here and he is, and maybe that’s what their ‘coven’ is going to start coming down to. Taking each other’s battles, as they come. Behind his back, Quentin’s fingers flick in a familiar tut. He thinks of his dad’s eyes when he repaired that plane, thinks of Eliot laughing when Teddy brought him yet another broken tile, thinks of Alice smiling when he fixed that mug at South.

 

_“Like I woke it up and reminded it what it used to be.”_

  
The Seam-mirror wants to be fixed.

  
“What did you do?” Everett demands.

  
“Just a Minor Mending,” Quentin says, with all the confidence Eliot or Margo would put in the words, and he flings the bottle with the Monster in it. He sees it clear the mirror frame and then he runs like hell, faster than he’s ever run in his life. In another life maybe he’d be too tired to run, he feels it even here. That dark voice that never leaves him, whispering how easy it would be to stop, to rest. But there’s Eliot flickering in the back of his mind, weak but alive, alive and himself again. There’s Alice, bright and sharp as ever and they promised to take care of each other. There’s the double echo of Margo through them, who will go to the Underworld just to kick his ass if he doesn’t make it back.

  
He can rest in one of the chairs in Eliot’s hospital room, Quentin tells that voice, with soulbonds echoing in his mind till they almost drown out the whispers. He can rest with Alice who’s almost as tired as he is, he can curl up with Margo or Julia until they crash out. Quentin dives through the door and slides across the ground on his stomach, only just managing to twist enough that he doesn’t crash headfirst into the opposite wall.

  
Quentin doesn’t have time to get to his feet on his own before 23’s pulling him up by the arm. They make a run for it before the sparks can eat through the door Alice slammed shut and follow them down the corridor, and tumble back through the mirror to land in a pile of limbs on the floor. “Holy shit,” 23 says as he pushes himself up to a sitting position.

  
“You can say that -”

  
Alice slaps him across the face. Quentin presses a hand to his cheek, staring at her. “What was that for?”

  
“You scared the hell out of me!” she yells, and then throws herself at him. Quentin wraps his arms around her, pressing his face into her hair. He thinks about how he’d have felt, in her shoes, and suddenly the necessary thing feels… a little less so.

  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I just - Alice, if that thing - if it took Everett’s body, with all the magic he’s got plus its own power… You know that couldn’t happen, he’d kill us all first, you know he would.”

  
“You’re right,” Alice says, “but next time, not like that. We are not losing you, you hear me? You are not expendable.”

  
Quentin doesn’t always believe that, but he doesn’t argue either. They have their other soulmates to get back to, after all, and they head back to the infirmary together, 23 heading off to find Julia, probably.

  
Margo’s sitting by Eliot’s bedside when they get there, holding his hand. Wordless, Quentin all but falls into the other chair, reaching for Eliot’s other hand. Dimly, he hears Alice fill Margo in, he knows that at some point he’s going to be in trouble with her too, but right now he doesn’t care. All that matters is Eliot’s hand in his, familiar if a little too cool. All that matters is that Eliot’s alive and breathing, their bond steady in Quentin’s mind once more.

  
God, he’s so tired. He lays his head on the mattress near Eliot’s hip, closing his eyes. It’s not a comfortable position, really, but Quentin is too tired to care.

  
Quentin wakes up to a familiar hand in his hair. At first, he only hums sleepily, leaning into the touch, pressing his cheek deeper into the soft surface under his head. Then there’s a soft, hoarse laugh. “Baby, you stay like that your neck’s gonna hurt like a son of a bitch.”

  
“Eliot!” Quentin’s voice breaks as he sits upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “El, you’re awake.”

 

“And so are you,” Eliot says with that soft smile Quentin sees only rarely, the one that makes his heart turn over every single time. “The girls figure themselves out? I remember - I remember they - right before we lost our memories…”

  
Quentin follows Eliot’s gaze to where Margo and Alice are curled up together on a couch he’s pretty sure someone dragged in here illicitly while he was sleeping. “Maybe? I don’t know. I kind of fell asleep almost as soon as I got here,” Quentin admits. “It’s… been a long few months, El. If - I almost didn’t - I don’t know how much longer I could have held out,” he admits shakily.

  
“Q. Come here.”

  
“El, there’s a hole in your side, hospital beds aren’t meant for -”

  
“ _Come. Here._ ” Eliot reaches for Quentin’s hand, tugs gently, and Quentin can’t refuse him, doesn’t want to. It’s awkward, figuring out how to arrange himself, but finally he’s curled on the bed with Eliot, his palm pressed to Eliot’s heart. He thinks he’s crying, thinks they might both be crying.

  
But that’s all right, Quentin thinks dizzily, feeling Eliot press a kiss to the top of his head, his arm around Quentin. It’s all right because they’re all still here, they’re all alive. They’ve made it through the nightmare and they’re going to be all right.


End file.
